Since the start of this school year, the Redskin Tech Team has been working on its FIRST LEGO League competition project, which includes an in-depth research project in addition to a robotics programming event.

“The more language arts-inclined worked on the presentation, while those really good at programming worked on the robotics stuff, but we all contributed to everything,” Chapman said.

The topic for this year’s competition was hydrodynamics. For the research project, the Port Clinton’s eighth-grade team decided to address the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Flint’s water crisis began in 2014 after the city changed its water source from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department’s treated water, sourced from Lake Huron and the Detroit River, to the Flint River, ultimately leading to high levels of lead contamination from aging pipes.

“We’ve been working for the entirety of the school year on a plan to remove those pipes and replacing them, but money needs to be raised for that,” Nellet said. “So we were thinking of using some form of sin tax.”

Nellet explained that in their proposal the “sin tax” would be on nonessentials, such as cigarettes, and likely would not exceed more than about 25 cents per purchase.

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Members of the Port Clinton Middle School Redskin Tech Team work on the presentation portion of the competition prior to the state championship this weekend.(Photo: Jon Stinchcomb/News Herald)

They also explored various kinds of pipes used in infrastructure that would be less prone to contamination, and the idea of having Flint switch back to their prior water source before the crisis.

They met with local officials, such as Steven Lange, of the Ottawa County Sanitary Engineering Department; Eric Petersen, Port Clinton’s water distribution foreman; Port Clinton safety-service director Olen Martin, and others.

While the students spend 30 minutes of each school day working on the project, they also often come in outside of school hours to research and practice together.

“They’ve done a really nice job researching the project,” Ron Aukerman said. “They’ve been a pretty dedicated bunch of kids working together to solve multiple problems.”